The Professor and the Propagandists: Theodore Postol and the Syria "Gas Attack"

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It is hard to believe that just three weeks ago the entire corporate media was in uproar over Syria; specifically, about the need to 'do something' in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack in Khan Shaykhun, Idlib, Syria, on April 4.

Guardian commentator George Monbiot summed up the corporate media zeitgeist:

'Do those who still insist Syrian govt didn't drop chemical weapons have any idea how much evidence they are denying?'

Monbiot linked to evidence supplied by Bellingcat, an organisation hosted by Eliot Higgins. In a 2014 letter to the London Review of Books, Richard Lloyd and Ted Postol, described by the New York Times as 'leading weapons experts', dismissed Higgins as,

'a blogger who, although he has been widely quoted as an expert in the American mainstream media, has changed his facts every time new technical information has challenged his conclusion that the Syrian government must have been responsible for the sarin attack [in Ghouta, August 2013]. In addition, the claims that Higgins makes that are correct are all derived from our findings, which have been transmitted to him in numerous exchanges'.

Professor Postol, a professor emeritus of science, technology, and national-security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has an impressive record of fearlessly debunking propaganda. For example, the Pentagon declared the Patriot missile system no less than 98% successful at intercepting and destroying Iraqi Scud missiles during the 1991 Gulf War. After careful examination, Postol found that the Patriot's success rate was rather less impressive:

'It became clear that it wasn't even close to intercepting any targets, let alone some targets.' (Postol, quoted, Great Military Blunders, Channel 4, March 2, 2000)

Postol has now challenged a White House report on the alleged chemical weapons attack in Idlib. He notes:

'The only source the document cites as evidence that the attack was by the Syrian government [air force] is the crater it claims to have identified on a road in the North of Khan Shaykhun.'

But Postol claims that the White House's photographic evidence 'clearly indicates that the munition was almost certainly placed on the ground with an external detonating explosive on top of it that crushed the container so as to disperse the alleged load of sarin'.

He adds:

'I have reviewed the document carefully, and I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria at roughly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017.

'No competent analyst would assume that the crater cited as the source of the sarin attack was unambiguously an indication that the munition came from an aircraft. No competent analyst would assume that the photograph of the carcass of the sarin canister was in fact a sarin canister. Any competent analyst would have had questions about whether the debris in the crater was staged or real. No competent analyst would miss the fact that the alleged sarin canister was forcefully crushed from above, rather than exploded by a munition within it. All of these highly amateurish mistakes indicate that this White House report... was not properly vetted by the intelligence community as claimed.'

Postol's conclusion could hardly be more damning:

'I have worked with the intelligence community in the past, and I have grave concerns about the politicization of intelligence that seems to be occurring with more frequency in recent times – but I know that the intelligence community has highly capable analysts in it. And if those analysts were properly consulted about the claims in the White House document they would have not approved the document going forward.'

'We again have a situation where the White House has issued an obviously false, misleading and amateurish intelligence report.'

'What I think is now crystal clear is that the White House report was fabricated and it certainly did not follow the procedures it claimed to employ.'

He added:

'My best guess at the moment is that this was an extremely clumsy and ill-conceived attempt to cover up the fact that Trump attacked Syria without any intelligence evidence that Syria was in fact the perpetrator of the attack.... It may be that the White House staff was worried that this could eventually come out—a reckless president acting without regard to the nation's security, risking an inadvertent escalation and confrontation with Russia, and a breakdown in cooperation with Russia that would cripple our efforts to defeat the Islamic State.

'If that is not an impeachable offense, then I do not know what is.'

Robert Parry, an investigative reporter who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s, comments:

'On April 11, five days after Trump's decision to attack the Syrian airbase, Trump's White House released a four-page "intelligence assessment" that offered another alleged motivation, Khan Sheikhoun's supposed value as a staging area for a rebel offensive threatening government infrastructure. But that offensive had already been beaten back and the town was far from the frontlines.

'In other words, there was no coherent motive for Assad to have dropped sarin on this remote town. There was, however, a very logical reason for Al Qaeda's jihadists to stage a chemical attack and thus bring pressure on Assad's government. (There's also the possibility of an accidental release via a conventional government bombing of a rebel warehouse or from the rebels mishandling a chemical weapon – although some of the photographic evidence points more toward a staged event.)'

We have no idea who was responsible for the mass killings in Idlib on April 4; we are not weapons experts. But it seems obvious to us that arguments and evidence offered by credible sources like Postol should at least be aired by the mass media. As Parry writes:

'The role of an honest press corps should be to apply skepticism to all official stories, not carry water for "our side" and reject anything coming from the "other side," which is what The New York Times, The Washington Post and the rest of the Western mainstream media have done, especially regarding Middle East policies and now the New Cold War with Russia.'

Our search of the Lexis database (April 26) finds that no UK newspaper article has mentioned the words 'Postol' and 'Syria' in the last month. In our April 12 media alert, we noted that former and current UN weapons inspectors Hans Blix, Scott Ritter and Jerry Smith, as well as former CIA counterterrorism official Philip Giraldi, had all questioned the official narrative of what happened on April 4. Lexis finds these results for UK national newspapers:

'Blix' and 'Syria' = 0 hits

'Ritter' and 'Syria' = 0 hits

'Jerry Smith' and Syria = 1 hit

'Giraldi' and 'Syria' = 0 hits.

It is remarkable that, even after the deceptions of Iraq and Libya, journalists are so unwilling to report credible evidence challenging the US government's version of events. This is made even more shocking by the fact that Trump has not, of course, been treated with the respect and deference usually reserved for US presidents. Rather, he has been subjected to a barrage of relentless and damning criticism.

And yet, in response to his illegal bombing of a foreign country, the press has not only dropped its usual criticism, but showered Trump with praise while suppressing reasoned criticism. Yet more evidence that corporate journalism is dangerously corrupted by political and economic forces demanding Perpetual War.